The first of my finds at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon is the one I was most keen to try, a box of chocolates from Amano. I would have liked to try all the flavors, but decided that I’d better stick to the smallest of the three boxes as I still had a plane ride back home. Here are the six out of ten flavors that I got in this little black box:

Raspberry Ganache with Guayas Chocolate and White Chocolate – Set in the space dome shape with shading from white to red on the top, it has a white chocolate outside with the dark ganache inside. The raspberry has a citrus taste, and the white and dark aspects of the chocolate flavor level each other out with sweet and rich.

Tangerine Ganache with Ocumare Milk Chocolate – This is the single milk chocolate I had, in a delicate shape — in fact, all of them are rather sleek-looking. Tasting the plain milk chocolate first, the tangerine on the inside hit me strongly for a second before calming. It works if you like tangerine in chocolate.

Yuzu (Japanese Citrus) Ganache with White Chocolate – A pretty yellow and green paint slash decorates its pale face. It is more to my liking with a low-key, barely citrussy, more herbal taste, which adds a zing to the sweet and mellow white chocolate.

Dos Rios Palet D’Or – If you didn’t catch on to that “or,” it means there’s gold in here — just a tad sprinkled on top to make it special. And it is special. To-die-for or burst-into-tears special. Because Amano Chocolate is so wonderful with flavor notes, when you put that into the further stage of a truffle, the result is everything. It’s bitter, it’s rich, it tastes of nibs and berries, and is the flavor of the night sky if I could pick it up and munch on it. I’d love to see a box with just the three plain truffles (the others are Ocumare and Madagascar) at some point.

Key Lime Ganache with Guayas Chocolate – Looking like a cute magical toad with its green, white-dotted skin, I do believe there is a bit of silver sprinkled on this one. Biting in, you get the rich chocolate and the tangy, springy lime; yet neither is it too strong.

Cinnamon Ganache with Guayas Chocolate and Candied Pecans – A semi-lego-like shape here. And did someone mention the holidays? Because that’s what I’m picking up in here. There is cinnamon, fresh and true, in a quantity of dark chocolate, with that piece of pecan covered in warmth to add in a bit of earth.

Not bad beginnings in the truffle world at all. Amano knows what’s important: using real ingredients and getting complex flavors going.